Skyrule
by Eruedraith
Summary: Zelda with airships. Okay, it's a little more complicated than that - a totally reimagined Hyrule and Zelda cast, and the things that happen to them. Rated for language, innuendo, and violence.


Sometime in the past, Death Mountain could have been called a volcano, but ages of being separate from the earth had demoted it to 'a big rock with a hole in it'. The only evidence that the mountain had ever spewed fire like an irate dragon were in the old nursery rhymes the women in Kakariko City told their children.

In fact, Death Mountain had a lot more than just one hole in it nowadays. The rock had been blasted and chipped away to create shallow arches and artificial caves and tunnels, adding onto an already-labyrinthine infrastructure.

Nestled all around the mountain were ports, most of them holding airships. Partially deflated long balloons helped keep the craft aloft, with propeller engines making quiet _tinking _sounds that were totally blocked out by the babbling roar of street life within the mountain.

Kakariko had long since invaded Death Mountain's passages. Food sellers filled the air with an almost suffocating atmosphere of conflicting smells and smoke, made visible by the periodic shafts of light that poked through holes in the rock ceiling. Con artists feigned Sheikah or shamanic heritage in dark, smoky corners, hoping to entice some of the more gullible members of the crowds over and out of their wallets. However, most of the crowds were smarter than that - grizzled airship workers, members of the Hyrule Navy, merchants and mercenaries looking for the next job. Generic vagabonds, most of them.

And also a trio of Goron police rolling along like so many boulders, chasing down a diminutive, dark-skinned Gerudo boy. His name was Dorf.

Dorf barreled through the crowd, pushing people out of the way whenever he couldn't avoid them. His bare feet rapped a staccato rhythm out on the hard rock floor - he'd lost his sandals almost four hundred feet ago and two levels up. Sweat had plastered his curly red locks to his skin, at least where it hadn't been held back by a beige strip of fabric, inscribed with angular Gerudo designs.

He stumbled after tripping on a surprisingly sturdy leg, but was able to recover with minimal effort, catching himself on the ground with one arm. Either of his forearms were covered in a material identical to his headband, with similar designs overlapping disappearing under each other as the fabric overlapped.

Dorf risked a look back behind himself. The crowds had parted around the triple pursuit, and they were gaining fast. Dorf scowled. Corporal Debris was supposed to be the slow, stupid kind of copper, but when he woken up today to go to work, he'd apparently chosen to be the relentless kind of copper that knew precisely how to chase down someone who was used to running. Just his luck, really.

Dorf's big hands fished about in the pockets of his baggy red pants, searching for something to help get him out of this bind, but they came up empty. His scowl deepened, and he checked the more shallow pockets of his leather vest, which hung open, exposing his scrawny chest to the warm tunnel air. When he found nothing but the dubiously-silver watch that he'd just stolen, his alarm turned to panic.

He needed to pull _something, _and quick. Otherwise, he was pretty sure that he was looking at a nice vacation in the Mountain jail.

Which was bad, because some of his… _acquaintances _were in that jail, too. Yes. _Very _bad.

Dorf vaulted over a cabbage merchant's wagon, hoping that the Gorons would lose track of him. When the sound of three Gorons smashing through a wagon of cabbage came to his ears, he decided that his hopes had been unfounded. He had forgotten that Gorons saw primarily through vibrations in the earth, especially when they were rolling, so it was hard to escape them in a rock-covered place like this.

Yep, they were definitely still on his tail. Yep, definitely gaining. Yep, he was pretty much screwed at this point.

Dorf's panicked eyes raked the chaotic street, trying to find something, anything that he could use to escape. When nothing presented itself to him, he grit his teeth. He'd been hoping to avoid having to do this, but…

He rolled his right hand about, flexing his long fingers as he prepared himself. He shook his left arm, and a small ring fell from the fabric on his forearm, which he deftly caught. As he dashed over to the entrance of a nearby alleyway, he slipped the ring onto the middle finger of his right hand. The cool metal against his skin, and the otherworldly charge that came with it, felt like a glove over his hand.

Dorf skidded to a halt inside the alleyway, and almost immediately, the trio of Gorons stopped outside the alleyway. They took a moment to unfurl into humanoid form again, and another moment to recover from the dizziness that plagued Gorons after such a long time rolling. A scrappier - or maybe just stupider - runaway might have chosen this time to try and make a fight of it, and maybe they might have gotten away with it. Still, Dorf shied away from fighting. For one thing, it presented the danger of him getting hurt.

Debris's still-somewhat-dazed eyes focused somewhat on Dorf's face, and gave a grin that split his rocky face in two. "Well, looks like we've gotten you this time, goro," he rumbled in his thick Goron accent. "Now, goro, why don't you just pass that watch back over to us, we'll get it back to the guy you took it off of, and then we can all take you back to the station, sort this-"

"No," Dorf cut him short, slowly walking backwards towards the wall at the end of the alleyway. Clenching his jaw in concentration, he willed the ring's trigger to activate. He whirled, and swung a desperate punch towards the brick and mortar of the wall.

The wall exploded into a storm of dust and rock, and Dorf didn't waste a second in diving away from the Gorons. The massive vibrations would keep them effectively blinded for long enough for him to get away, hopefully. He'd turned the ring on almost immediately after the chase had begun, and now, every movement that the ring had been a part of had been stored into that ring, and now been pushed out into the wall. It had drained Dorf a lot more than he had been comfortable with, but it looked like his gamble had paid off.

He landed on a steep slope of what was once magma in a bygone age, and began to dash downwards, the combination of desperate panic and gravity speeding him along. His arm was still buzzing with shock from the earlier blow. He foggily remembered learning something about equal action and reaction somewhere, but for some reason, rules like that just didn't matter when you brought in his talents.

Magic. What the hell.

Dorf allowed himself a cautious smile. Well, it looked like he'd escaped once more. Now he just had to fence this watch off to someplace, and he'd have a heavier wallet - and, more importantly, be able to go 'Who? Me?' if any accusations came round.

He looked back at the buildings at the top of the slanting black hills, and laughed. He was home free.

Dorf then walked straight into a man's fist.

As he blinked reflexive tears out of his eyes, he tried to focus on the figure that had just sent him sprawling to the ground. Captain Rusl, of the Kakariko Police, smiled apologetically down at him. "If it makes you feel any better, the trick with the wall was a good one, except not all cops see with the ground, eh?"

Dorf groaned and sank back to the ground. He was exhausted and beaten. Worst of all, he'd been nicked.

#

Well, at least he'd gotten a cell to himself, Dorf reflected. He stared across the path into the empty cell across from his, hunched over and leaning on his knees. He was seated on a slab of wooden that could be loosely defined as a bench, if you squinted.

Dorf generally tried to avoid the Kakariko jail, so he wasn't very familiar with its structure. It was solidly built from locally-quarried stone, with good locks and bars keeping its inmates, well, _in_mates and not _out_mates. Maybe if he'd still had his ring, he might have been able to bust out, but it was hard to make punching a metal door open stealthy. Plus, there would have been the unfortunate problem of guards running him down, as well.

The point was moot, however. Rusl had confiscated the ring before Dorf could blink, and had also liberated him of a few other, more mundane, trinkets, like a set of lock picks and a Ruto coin that he'd kept as a novelty. Dorf sighed heavily. He'd worked hard at making that ring. Okay, so he didn't _make _it so much as bought it… okay, stole it. Point was, _someone, somewhere _up the line, had worked hard at making it.

The salesman that he'd gotten it off of didn't know what it was, anyways, so it was of more use to him. He'd always been able to tell if an object was magical or not. It probably came with the territory of being a mage in the first place. Granted, it had taken him a few tries (and a couple broken fingers) to figure out how to work the ring, but when he did, it had become invaluable to him.

Occasionally, Dorf had thought of finding someone to teach him more about magic, but he had always decided against it. The natural ability to use magic and magical objects wasn't uncommon - hell, you needed it just to activate any airship that you wanted to actually fly rather than drop - but the amount of work and research that you had to put into it to actually refine it? Dorf passed on that every day of the week.

"What do you mean, you're not coming?" an enraged voice came from down the hall, shaking Dorf from his reverie. There was a quiet, vague response that Dorf was unable to make out, and then a bout of swearing from the first voice. As it finished with its torrent of profanity, it calmed somewhat, and said, "Damn it, Vaati, why not?"

Curiosity getting the better of him, Dorf rose from where he had been sitting and went over to the bars, trying to hear what the other voice said in reply.

"-and I'm just not really in the mood for more of this to happen to me, just 'cause you get pissed at somebody, and I'll bet that Zelda's getting tired of it too. I'm sure that you can find another mage around here. Hell, it's _Kakariko, _Link, Cyclos knows how many mages come here between jobs. You can't swing a Din-damned cat around without hitting a mage in the face. Listen, it was fun, but I'm gonna go find a job where I'm not getting arrested every other day. See ya." There was a scuffle of cloth, and a small, caped figure walked briskly past Dorf's cell.

His ears were pointed, like a Hylian's, but his skin was a shade of purple-blue that Dorf didn't recognize. His age was impossible to judge in such a short amount of time, but he could have been anywhere from fifteen to thirty. His eyes were partially covered in long hair of a similar hue, but they pierced the barrier easily, glancing at Dorf for a moment before returning to look ahead of him once more. They were blood red, much like Dorf's own. He watched the blue man leave the cell block accompanied by a hulking Goron guard.

Dorf heard a muttering sound from his right, and saw another man standing there. This one looked older, definitely in the late-forties/early fifties range, with a heavily weathered and scarred face contorted into a scowl. His clothing was a careless patchwork of styles and clothing that seemed to have no real purpose, and a pair of Hylian ears poked up past the green hem of a hat-

Oh, Din, the _hat. _It looked… Dorf was at a loss for descriptors. The hat simply _was. _It was some sort of thing that an artist would draw if they'd never seen a hat before, but had it described to them by a hyperactive five-year-old. It was some sort of green that defined such mundane concepts as 'hue' and 'shading', all wrapped up in the shape of a deflated dunce cap, the point hanging down at the man's neck in a dejected fashion.

The man growled something under his breath and made to follow his former companion, but Dorf decided to jump on what was clearly a carrot that the universe was holding for him. A very, very, very _dirty _carrot, but a carrot.

"Hey, mister," he called out.

The man turned, raising an eyebrow. "What do you want?" he grunted.

"I'm a mage," said Dorf simply. Maybe, if he could get this guy to get him out of here somehow, then maybe he'd be able to go to ground for a bit, try a different bit of Kakariko that didn't know him that well. After ditching the hat. And the man wearing it.

The man just looked at him for a few moments before busting out into laughter. Dorf endured the gales of laughter with a sort of resigned frustration, but stayed optimistic - there was still a chance, right?

"No," said the man after he had finished laughing.

Dorf was undeterred. "No, seriously, I am. I mean, I'm not exactly _good, _but I'm good enough to form a Pact. You need one to fly, right?"

"Listen, how old are you, kid?"

Dorf shrugged. "Fourteen, fifteen, maybe sixteen. Hell if I know." And it was true. He _didn't _know. No one kept track of birthdays or age for him when he was young, so all he had to go by was estimation compared to other people he'd met. He didn't really care.

"Riiight," said the man, cocking his head. "And what's more, you're in prison. I don't want to have to go into grabbing some kid out of the local jail who may or may not actually be a mage. Thanks, but I'll pass." With that, he span on his heel and left the room, still laughing a little to himself.

Dorf watched him leave, and then slumped against the bars, sighing. "Well, that didn't exactly work," he muttered. His eyes wandered over to the door's lock, and he furrowed his brows. All but the most powerful mages required some sort of physical focus in order to use their magic, like the ring that he'd had confiscated from him. However, that was just to actually _shape _the magic into a predictable, familiar form.

Maybe, if he was careful, he might be able to do something to this lock with just his magic alone…

Before he could give it a shot, however, the floor rumbled underneath his feet. In the distance, Dorf was able to hear a chaotic tempo of _thuds, _keeping in time with the rumbling. Dorf swore. That was _cannon _fire! Why the _hell _were cannons being fired right now?

He scrambled over to the bench, standing on it so that he could peer out the barred window out into the city. Though he wasn't able to make out much, he could see several airships in action outside the mountain. Dorf set his jaw. Kakariko City was frequented by the Hyrulian Navy - normal raiders or pirates usually steered well clear of it.

Which meant that whoever was out there was either suicidally overconfident, or that they were packing some _serious _firepower.

Dorf had only a moment's warning before the cannonball hit the wall that he was leaning against. An airship dipped into view, there was a sudden fireball of a gun firing, and Dorf dove to the corner furthest away.

For the second time that day, Dorf was in close proximity to a wall being turned into dust, only this time, he was on the wrong side. He reflexively threw his arms up, covering his head, trying to shelter himself from the cutting debris that were sure to hit him at an moment now.

And stayed there. Even when the sounds of stone exploding into chips of rock had finished, Dorf set there, awaiting a quick death. However, when he realized that he still _felt _alive, he peeked out from behind his arms. He was completely unmarked.

This was primarily because all of the rubble was sitting around him, marking out a boundary in the shape of a triangle. Not even the smallest pebble had gotten within six inches of him.

Cautiously, Dorf rose, looked around himself once more, and then at the ready-made exit that the cannon's shot had left in the wall. Muttering a vague thank-you to any deities that might be around at the time, he fell into a loping run, moving as quickly as possible from the prison.

Kakariko City was in chaos. Through holes in the ceiling, both new and old, Dorf could see at _least _a dozen airships in the sky, almost all of them flying a black and gold flag with a design that he didn't recognize - a coiling scorpion, with a single red eye staring out at the world as if the universe itself had offended it.

The sound of cannon fire was constant, like a deep, rushing river of noise. The meager police force that Kakariko had could do nothing - the biggest guns they had were muskets, and there was no way that they'd be able to get any of their people up onto the quick-moving vessels. While more Navy ships were being launched, the attackers' ships still outnumbered any opposition three-to-one.

All of this was peripheral to Dorf, however. His goal was finding a nice little hole somewhere to take cover, and to then come up once the noise stopped. He knew of a few places around the city, and he was currently hightailing it to the closest one.

The hidey-hole in question was the cellar of an old saloon. Dorf hurriedly bashed the padlock from the wooden hatch's doors with a rock, panic giving him the strength he needed. He threw one of the doors open, walked down a few steps, slammed it closed after himself, and then sat tight until the entire thing had blown over.

At least, that's what _would _have happened, had a large hand not clamped on the back of his leather vest before he was able to slip into the cellar. Dorf looked back to see a greasy-looking man there, his unkempt black hair falling around his shoulders like a briar bush. A large cutlass was in the hand not currently holding onto Dorf, and a flintlock was in his belt. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, Dorf noted that this was quite possibly the most quintessentially pirate-y pirate that he'd ever laid eyes on, and that he badly needed some originality in his outfit.

That same part of Dorf also wondered why this one had gone for _him _rather than some charming pure maiden. Hadn't this idiot read the pirating manual?

The man was about to say something when Dorf twisted, grabbed his forearm, and pulled himself up. Dorf then kicked the man in the face. Doubtless the pirate was about to say something trite like 'where's the booze, boy' or something like that, and Dorf _really _wasn't in the mood for that.

As the man released his hold on him, Dorf ran like hell. He wasn't really sure where he was going this time, but that didn't matter. Maybe, if he kept moving, he would get out of this alive. He winced as he saw a nearby building explode into fire and matchsticks after a few cannonballs had hit it. Clearly, the attacking group had added a few surprises to their ammunition.

"Hey! You!" came a voice from behind him. It was the pirate. Apparently, Dorf hadn't kicked him hard enough - and he was gaining. Dorf hadn't noticed him before he'd called out, and now he was close enough to grab for him-

-and a tall, blond woman swung an immense wrench clear into his face. Dorf winced in pity for the man. _No one _deserved to get hit in the face twice in one day.

He glanced over to his savior. She was dressed in a greasy, old set of mechanic's overalls, her muscular arms bare. Her long, blond hair was streaked with oil and what looked like dried blood, masking all but the tips of her Hylian ears. She looked like she was in her mid-thirties or so, though gauging her age wasn't high on Dorf's priorities list. She looked dispassionately on as the back of the pirate's head collided with the hard rock below.

"Y-you saved me," Dorf stammered.

The woman looked over at him. "Really? Damn it."

Before Dorf could formulate a cutting and witty comeback (he had several eloquently snappish options, like 'up yours!' and 'what?'), he was interrupted by yet _another _voice.

"Zelda! There you are." it was the Hylian from the prison. And his hat. Dorf wondered how the thing had stayed on his head for so long without a strap or anything like that. Maybe it was elastic around the edge.

"Oh, hey, Link," the woman said, resting her large wrench across her shoulders, ignoring the drops of blood that had flown from it onto her clothing. "Where's Vaati? I wanna get the hell out of here."

"He bailed, the jackass," Link panted. Dorf saw that he now had a sword sheathed across his back, but it was of a style that Dorf didn't recognize. It wasn't a broadsword or a Gerudo cutlass - in fact, it didn't even seem to have a complete hilt. "So we're down one mage. That means we're grounded."

Zelda growled in frustration. "Crap. And that's _Gohma's _flag up there. So not only did she apparently jump up a few miles on the pirating ladder, she's also got a personal beef with us. Or, rather, you. I don't suppose that you've taken the time to make up with her since that whole mess?"

Link looked furtively around. "Erm. No." Then, he saw Dorf. "Hey, what are _you _doing here?"

Zelda looked between the two of them. "You guys know each other?"

"We met in the prison," Link said dismissively, ignoring Zelda's 'I'm not surprised'. "Hey, were you serious about being a mage?"

Dorf nodded furiously. "Yeah. I assume that you're looking for one a little more indiscriminately now?"

Anything that Link had been about to say was drowned out by the sound of a massive airship blasting its way through the rock wall, and slowly coasting partway inside the mountain. The three of them could see lines being dropped from the nosecone, and also the dozen figures slipping down them at breakneck speeds.

"Okay, great, we've got a mage, now let's run," Zelda said, a thought that the other two agreed with wholeheartedly. As one, they span on their heels and ran. Although Dorf felt confident that he could run faster than the two older Hylians, he surmised that, unlike him, these two actually had somewhere to run _to, _so it was probably advisable to let them lead the way.

After a few moments, Dorf recognized that they were headed towards the ports on the northeastern side of the mountain. It was fortunate that the jail was close to the ports, otherwise the run would have been even worse for the three of them, and it was bad enough already. Projectiles fired off by pirates and the few still-active Navy members whizzed around the air all about them, and the sounds of destruction hadn't abated. If anything, they'd gotten worse, and now, the tunnels were filled with smoke. Things were burning.

Still, they didn't run across any more groups of pirates, which was generally considered to be a good thing by all parties involved.

It took them a few more minutes, but they reached the ports. Here, the sounds of battle were far-off. Judging by how things were looking around here, the fight for the port had been quick, and one sided. The gaping holes in the side of the mountain made for good piers and good entry points, and the pirates had obviously made use of them. The bodies of port guards were strewn here and there, and Dorf had to swallow hard to keep from throwing up at the sight of them.

"Okay, now where did we make port, again?" Zelda mused, looking around, unconcerned by the corpses or the fires that had started here and there from spilled fuel.

"Right over…" Link started, leading them around a corner. "Here..." he voice trailed off, and Dorf saw why.

Surrounding an airship were almost two dozen pirates, with one sitting comfortably on a lawn chair in the middle of them, fanning herself casually with a wide fan. The fan bore the same design as the one on the pirates' flags.

"Ah! Link!" the woman said, rising and still fanning herself. She wore a classic blue tri-pointed hat, with shallow gashes showing around the brim. One of her eyes, the left one, was covered with a black eye patch, and she wore a coat over her shoulders that might have been a Hyrulian Naval officer's at some time in the distant past, but had long since been renovated to suit the style of its new owner. While she didn't seem to be armed, Dorf noted that her right hand, the one that wasn't busy with the fan, was still in her pocket. Plus, she had two dozen armed pirates on her side, so her being armed or not was inconsequential, really.

The woman was still talking. "So anyways, the boys n' me decided to hit Kakariko real quick, a little smash n' grab, you know how it goes. And then - whoa-pah - we see the _Epona _sittin' there, like a lil' pretty bird. So I thought that I'd drop over and wait for you, see if you'd show up. You know, so we can catch up. How've you been, anyways?" Before Link could respond, she continued. "Oh, I've been _great, _thanks for asking. I mean, you just killed half my men, blew two of my ships to hell, and - oh yeah, this one was _hilarious_, mate - _cut off my hand._ Real nice." the woman took her right hand from her pocket, and Dorf could immediately see that it was artificial, made out of gold, or some suitably goldish metal. She flexed the fingers, and the digits made satisfying little _clink-clank _sounds as they did.

Dorf was getting the feeling that maybe he'd chosen his companions poorly.

Link's hand went up for the hilt of his blade. He was a lefty, Dorf could see. "Ah-ah-ah," the woman admonished, and as one, the pirates behind her hefted a small arsenal of weaponry - muskets, flintlock pistols, even a few tomahawks. "None o' that, okay?"

Link didn't lower his hand, but he didn't draw his weapon, either. His grip visibly tightened, the knuckles turning white.

"So, where are Vaati and Zelda? And who's the runt?" the woman continued in a mock-casual tone. Here, both Link's and Dorf's eyes widened. A quick glance around them confirmed that, yes, Zelda was most certainly not there. Dorf felt despair settle into his stomach. Great. Just great. He'd gotten with a guy who some major pirate had a problem with, and that guy's partner had just ditched them. Great.

"They bailed," Link said gruffly. "The kid's just trying to get me to give him a ride."

"Without a mage?" the woman chuckled. "Or is _he _a mage?"

"What do you _want, _Gohma?" Link bit out.

"Well, to kill you, mostly," Gohma said, and the pirates behind her gave a dutiful laugh. When they did, Gohma gave them a quick one-eyed glare. "Shut it," she called back, and then returned her gaze back to Link.

Who was now right next to her, and sending his blade down towards her head. Dorf had barely even seen him move, but now Link was too close to Gohma for her crew to risk shooting at him, lest they hit their captain.

And the pirates had their own problems. Well, problem. Zelda, primarily. She had slipped out of nowhere, and was now cutting her way through the pirates. It was an education to watch her. Anything and everything was a weapon to her: she swept her wrench up to catch a pirate in the crotch, and as he sank to the ground, she threw him bodily into a bulky, crossbow-holding man, sending them sprawling. She had pulled a bottle from another man's belt and sent it flying into a surprised face, just before slicing another man's throat with his own necklace.

Dorf's eyes flicked back to Link and Gohma. The pirate had caught the blade on her hand, and now the two of them were grappling, her fan having fallen to the ground. Dorf now saw that Link's sword was of a foreign style, a katana or something like that. From the far west, if he was right.

The room suddenly vibrated as an animal's roar of immense volume and power rocked the mountain. Gohma gave a rough laugh and kicked Link away from herself. The man stumbled back a bit, but was otherwise okay. Zelda was still busy mauling the pirates, their guns useless in a close melee.

Gohma said, "We brought a little surprise, Link. A pretty damn big monster, actually. A battering ram, if you will."

Link spat a globule of blood onto the ground. "That's _wonderful,_" he drawled. "And I don't care." With that, he rushed at Gohma once more, bringing his blade up in a quick sweep, which Gohma jumped easily over.

Dorf decided that he'd better get going. He'd seen a few Pacts made, and if he was right, you generally needed to be on the airship at the time. He ran as fast as he could around the fight, and got over to the side of the airship. The name _Epona _was scrawled across its hull in flowing, worn script.

The hatch was unlocked, thank Farore. He yanked it open and ran onto the ship. The interior was close and dark, but he just needed to be on board.

Okay, now, second order of business: make a triangle. The triangle was a good, holy symbol. From what he'd seen, professional Pact mages usually used chalk or salt or something like that to draw a triangle, but he didn't have anything like that on him at the time. Grimacing, Dorf bit his thumb, drawing blood, and drew a tiny triangle on the floor with the scarlet liquid. It was barely big enough to contain his bare feet, but it was enough.

All right, what now, what the hell did they say _now_? Oh, yeah.

"I want to make a pact!' he yelled, his voice cracking. "A pact for the flight of the airship _Epona_!"

The world want silent for a moment, and then, everything went black, but not like he was falling unconscious. No, the blackness seemed to creep up all around him, like ink that had been spilled on the air. In seconds, he was enveloped by it. The only thing that had remained of the scene from below was the triangle of blood.

Everything was silent beyond Dorf's panicked breaths. _This _was different. He'd always seen the Pactmaker just close their eyes for a few moments, then they'd open them again, announce that everything was hunky-dory, and drinks all around.

He heard a weeping in the distance, then - an angry, deep sound, like the sobs of some great beast. "Hello?" he called out.

Out of nowhere, he was suddenly confronted by the sight of a colossal red dragon, with a long, coiling tail and enormous body. It was suspended in the air by a pair of tiny red wings on its back, and tears were falling from its golden eyes. Then, those eyes pivoted to look straight at him.

"Thou wouldst dare to demand a Pact with me, when my home hath been breached by that… that _abomination?_" it said in a voice deeper than an ocean.

"Uh. Yes." said Dorf stupidly.

The dragon growled. "Dost thou even know what a Pact demands, mage?"

"Uh. No." Dorf berated himself for not having anything better to say, but he was unable to get his tongue to do much more.

"It demands a service to the spirit that thou are making a Pact with," the dragon rumbled. Its tears still fell, but they had ceased effecting its voice. "And my price will be steep, mage."

"Okay, sure. Whatever. Fine. We really need to get out of here," Dorf said, stammering his way through it.

"Interesting," the dragon said, cocking its head at Dorf. "Very well. Here is what I charge thou with, in return for flight within my domain. Take this coin with thou, mage. Take it to Kaepora Gaebora, another spirit of the air. He travels the skies to everywhere. Thou are bound to find him sometime - especially in times like these. Then, thy Pact shall be complete."

An orange-red coin fell from the darkness down into Dorf's hand, with a simple design cut upon it. He pocketed it. "Okay, great, great. So can we fly now?"

The dragon sighed with grief. "Alas, it would seem that my cause is doomed with thou at the reigns. The Monster that even now ravages my mountain hungers for that coin, mage. You will be pursued." the dragon grinned now, horribly. "But you haven't much of a choice, now do you?"

Dorf ignored what the dragon was saying. "So, can we please finish this up, buddy?"

"Dost thou know the correct response?"

"No. I accept your pact, yada yada yada, can I fly now?"

The dragon's tears had stopped, and now its eyes were resigned. "I, Valoo, give thou the privilege of flight in my domain. Now go and fulfill thy promise." the dragon opened its jaw, and a gout of flame surrounded Dorf, keeping at the barrier of the triangle. Dorf stood very, very still, hoping that he wouldn't get burned.

And then, he was back upon the _Epona _once more. The hatch had been closed, and the metal beneath him lurched. He could hear Link and Zelda hurling abuses at each other, the _Epona, _various gods, and at the universe in general, and then he realized that they were falling.

Dorf gripped the walls and staggered his way up to the cockpit. Link was there, busily throwing switches, pressing down at pedals, and gripping at the stick in front of him. Through the windows, Dorf could see clouds below them, steadily getting closer. From what Dorf could deduce, they'd cast off without a Pact, and had needed to fight gravity on their own.

Link looked back at him from behind his hat. "Did you finish the Pact?"

"Yeah," Dorf said.

"Great. We had to cast off before those bastards got onto the _Epona_. Hey, Zelda!"

"What?" the woman yelled back.

"Pact's finished! We should be getting a little ignoring-physics courtesy of Valoo any minute now-"

Link's words were cut off as the _Epona _lurched once more, and they turned into a whoop. "Hell, yes! We're good, Zelda!" The _Epona _vibrated as the engines were turned on full-throttle, and Link viciously pulled downwards on the stick. The sight of the clouds swiftly shifted to the sight of empty blue sky, and the _Epona _started to climb.

The winds seemed to speed them along - well, maybe they really _were _speed them along, Dorf reflected. He'd just made a Pact with a spirit of the winds, after all. Dorf allowed himself a small, satisfied smile, and stuck a hand in the pocket of his pants. His hand made immediate contact with the cold metal of a coin, and his expression sobered. _The Monster hungers for it, _he recalled Valoo saying. Paraphrased, of course. He wasn't about to go trying to think about exact words right now.

Behind them, Death Mountain belched forth flame for the first time in eons, and roars of some creature echoed out across miles of sky.


End file.
